RNC debate qualifying (6 candidates have already qualified for the second debate in September)

[🇺🇦 Purple 🦄 Unicorn 🇮🇱]

According to the NYT, 8 candidates (without Trump) qualify for the debate:

"Former President Donald J. Trump won’t be there. But eight other Republicans hoping to catch him are now set for the first debate of the 2024 presidential primary on Wednesday in Milwaukee, the Republican National Committee announced on Monday night.

Those eight include Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has been Mr. Trump’s leading rival in most polling, and Mr. Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence. Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Trump ally turned antagonist, has secured a spot, as has another vocal Trump opponent, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas.

Two prominent South Carolina Republicans have also earned places onstage, Senator Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador. They will be joined by the political newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy and Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota.

The candidates will give Republicans a diverse field attempting to take on President Biden: six past or present governors, one Black candidate, two candidates born to Indian immigrants, one woman and one former vice president."

Perry Johnson didn't qualify in the end, probably because of technical issues: I think the RNC does not allow 2 polls from the same pollster and Perry got 3 Trafalagar polls (nationally, in Iowa and New Hampshire).

"A handful of others had been on the bubble heading into Monday evening. The Republican National Committee had imposed a 9 p.m. deadline for candidates to accumulate at least 40,000 donors and hit 1 percent in a certain number of qualifying national and state polls.

But two officials familiar with the R.N.C.’s decision said that three candidates all fell short: Perry Johnson, a businessman who previously tried to run for governor of Michigan; Francis X. Suarez, the mayor of Miami; and Larry Elder, a talk-show host who made a failed run for governor of California. Those three campaigns, already all long-shots, had claimed to have met the donor and polling threshold. But they now face an even more uncertain future."

New York Times article (for free, I am a subscriber)

[emailking]

Trump will probably live truth the debate.

[Andrew Cuomo is a No Go]

This is Perry Johnson erasure

[Anti-Penguin Tariff Voter]

This is Perry Johnson erasure

This is literally like what the 2016 DNC did to Sanders

[Consuming is good, it's what we're made for]

Suarez better make good on his promise and drop out.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Statement from the Perry Johnson campaign, sent to Politico: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000018a-1dd3-df68-a7da-9fdf2b5d0000

They basically rigged it - but officially, it wasn't the Trafalgar polls they took issue with. Instead, they claimed a national poll wasn't a national poll because it only sampled in 38 states.

[MichaelM24]

They should just let Johnson debate. I imagine so few people care about this, as so few people know who Perry Johnson is, but not letting him on the debate stage gives the appearance of bias.

I say this as someone who has no interest in Perry, or any Republican. It's this type of thing that the DNC did to Gravel in 2020, and it just doesn't look good. I mean, what damage could Perry even do if he was on stage? He'd get maybe two questions, so just let the guy debate.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

They should just let Johnson debate. I imagine so few people care about this, as so few people know who Perry Johnson is, but not letting him on the debate stage gives the appearance of bias.

I say this as someone who has no interest in Perry, or any Republican. It's this type of thing that the DNC did to Gravel in 2020, and it just doesn't look good. I mean, what damage could Perry even do if he was on stage? He'd get maybe two questions, so just let the guy debate.

On a totally unrelated note, how epic would it have been if they let Gravel debate Joe in 2019 again. "Who the hell are you going to nuke, Joe?"

[Averroës]

Even the RNC knows that Trafalgar Group's "proprietary digital methods" are BS. 

The outraged statements from the candidates who didn't make it are so tiresome. These people seized the thinnest possible pretext to having made the debate and then announced that they had qualified, as if it meant anything. The only purpose this display served was providing an excuse for what we're seeing now, formulaic hucksterism.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

The RNC unironically rigged this against Perry Johnson.

[emailking]

What would it mean to ironically rig it?

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Even the RNC knows that Trafalgar Group's "proprietary digital methods" are BS. 

The outraged statements from the candidates who didn't make it are so tiresome. These people seized the thinnest possible pretext to having made the debate and then announced that they had qualified, as if it meant anything. The only purpose this display served was providing an excuse for what we're seeing now, formulaic hucksterism.

As I said above, they didn't seem to disqualify his Trafalgar polls - they rejected the Victory Insights one. If they didn't like Trafalgar, they should have said so.

I suppose they might have avoided admitting this because Trafalgar is a Republican-leaning pollster.

[Averroës]

As I said above, they didn't seem to disqualify his Trafalgar polls - they rejected the Victory Insights one. If they didn't like Trafalgar, they should have said so.

I suppose they might have avoided admitting this because Trafalgar is a Republican-leaning pollster.

I would wait for a clearer statement from what the campaign's press release calls the "corrupt and rigged" RNC rather than trusting the account given in that release.

These rules tend to leave room for interpretation, let there be no illusions about that. But the polling threshold set in the criteria is so generous that the RNC seems to be straining more to include candidates like Burgum and Hutchinson than because it has it out for Elder or Johnson.  If Johnson's true level of support were at or above 1% anywhere that mattered, he wouldn't have this problem.

[Agafin]

No serious person actually thinks that the RNC is trying to keep Johnson from the debate stage. If anything, they were really generous with their debate qualifying rules, which allowed people like Burgum and Hutchinson to qualify.

Makes me wonder how absolutely crazy the 2028 primaries will be on both sides. Whether it's Biden or Trump who wins, there's gonna be no incumbent on both sides with no obvious "hire" at this point (like Clinton was in 2013). We could easily have 20+ candidates on each side qualifying for the debates. That could lead to something like 4 debates every month (assuming the RNC and DNC both do 2 debate nights per session like in 2020).

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

No serious person actually thinks that the RNC is trying to keep Johnson from the debate stage. If anything, they were really generous with their debate qualifying rules, which allowed people like Burgum and Hutchinson to qualify.

The rules were as lax as they were to give Burgum and Hutchinson ("respectable" candidates, basically) a better shot at qualification, but they were ignored to shut out Perry Johnson.

I'm not claiming they set out the rules specifically to deny Johnson a spot, or that the RNC fears him. I do think they are embarrassed by him, though, and they're slimy enough to ignore their own rules just to dampen that embarrassment.

They should have either followed their own rules or dispensed with rules entirely and just admitted they were inviting candidates who were current/former officeholders/people polling a lot better than 1% etc (or something entirely arbitrary).

If I were a staffer on the Johnson campaign, I'd be especially rankled because the rules require that the candidates all sign a loyalty pledge, which they've mostly been reluctant to do. Johnson actually held off on doing this until he qualified - he kissed the ring, and they spat in his face anyway.

[🇺🇦 Purple 🦄 Unicorn 🇮🇱]

6 candidates (DeSantis, Vivek, Haley, Scott, Christie and Pence) have already qualified for the second debate in September.

Trump is qualified based on polling and donors, but has not signed the required pledge.

Burgum has the 2 state polls that are required, but also needs a national poll with 3% or more.

Other candidates have no chance at this point.